Addressing the challenges of public housing retrofits

European directives are pushing EU member states to promote energy retrofits of their building stocks. Nevertheless, building renovation stagnates due to many issues, including financial, informational, behavioral, educational and other challenges. All of these increase for the public housing sector, where specific problems such as fuel poverty and social exclusion sum up to common problems such as the tenant-landlord dilemma. On the other hand, public housing represents an important asset for local governments, both in terms of economic and social value. By improving the quality of life and the economic resilience of inhabitant of public housing, local authorities may obtain long-term returns for social inclusion, and citizens' wellbeing. Following this perspective, the municipalities of Milan and Lisbon committed, within the larger framework of the EU funded Sharing Cities project, to promote the renovation of some pilot public housing estates. The design process, the objectives, the expected outcomes and the monitoring and assessment process are described in the paper, trying to highlight the potential benefit for tenants, local governments and, in the long run, for the whole society.

Urban fabric performance in Mediterranean city : a typology based mass-energy analysis

The link between urban form and building energy demand is a complex balance of morphological, constructive, utilization and climatic factor. Especially in European compact city where existing areas prevail on much more energy-efficient new settlements, it is evident that operative ways to transform efficiently the building stock have to be found. Moreover, it is now widely accepted that urban scale has a first rate importance in the building design process and its correlated energy performance. It has been observed that scaling laws are useful in describing the complex structure of urban systems: modern cities have a “metabòlic rate” that approximately follows the living organism scaling laws. Nevertheless, it has not been entirely verified that this connection remains the same while studying the phenomena at the urban and building scale and what kind of relationship between mass and power exists (i.e. energy) depending on typologies and urban form. This study suggests an approach for using mass parameter - representative of built-form - as energy performance evaluation tools on a homogeneous urban texture. Mass is connected to both built-form and technology and these determine, to a great extent, the energy use. In Mediterranean climate, it has been observed that mass has strong relevance on energy demand playing an important role in reducing heating and cooling consumptions. Our work aims at validating this relationship, focusing on widespread urban fabrics of the Mediterranean compact city. Tests on diferent case studies from Barcelona and Rome (analyzed independently in terms of their energy demands and their masses) are carried out. Mass evaluation is based on calculation of effective mass of built elements. Building energy demand is assessed by modelling on multi space dynamic thermal analysis tool. Results presented and discussed point out that heating and cooling energy demand are related to urban fabrics mass and, starting from typological based analysis, it’s possible to estimate it. This work is a broader treatment of a research study about one possible way to comprehend “metabolic rate” scaling law concerning urban fabric. Such knowledge-base could giving hints to conscious and effective built environament transformations towards more efficient conditions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Portugal SB13: contribution of sustainable building to meet EU 20-20-20 targets

Proceedings of the International Conference Portugal SB13: contribution of sustainable building to meet EU 20-20-20 targetsThe international conference Portugal SB13 is organized by the University of Minho, the Technical University of Lisbon and the Portuguese Chapter of the International Initiative for a Sustainable Built Environment in Guimarães, Portugal, from the 30th of October till the 1st of November 2013. This conference is included in the Sustainable Building Conference Series 2013-2014 (SB13-14) that are being organized all over the world. The event is supported by high prestige partners, such as the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) and the International Initiative for a Sustainable Built Environment (iiSBE). Portugal SB13 is focused on the theme â Sustainable Building Contribution to Achieve the European Union 20-20-20 Targetsâ . These targets, known as the â EU 20-20-20â targets, set three key objectives for 2020: - A 20% reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels; - Raising the share of EU energy consumption produced from renewable resources to 20%; - A 20% improvement in the EU's energy efficiency. Building sector uses about 40% of global energy, 25% of global water, 40% of global resources and emit approximately 1/3 of the global greenhouse gas emissions (the largest contributor). Residential and commercial buildings consume approximately 60% of the worldâ s electricity. Existing buildings represent significant energy saving opportunities because their performance level is frequently far below the current efficiency potentials. Energy consumption in buildings can be reduced by 30 to 80% using proven and commercially available technologies. Investment in building energy efficiency is accompanied by significant direct and indirect savings, which help offset incremental costs, providing a short return on investment period. Therefore, buildings offer the greatest potential for achieving significant greenhouse gas emission reductions, at least cost, in developed and developing countries. On the other hand, there are many more issues related to the sustainability of the built environment than energy. The building sector is responsible for creating, modifying and improving the living environment of the humanity. Construction and buildings have considerable environmental impacts, consuming a significant proportion of limited resources of the planet including raw material, water, land and, of course, energy. The building sector is estimated to be worth 10% of global GDP (5.5 trillion EUR) and employs 111 million people. In developing countries, new sustainable construction opens enormous opportunities because of the population growth and the increasing prosperity, which stimulate the urbanization and the construction activities representing up to 40% of GDP. Therefore, building sustainably will result in healthier and more productive environments. The sustainability of the built environment, the construction industry and the related activities are a pressing issue facing all stakeholders in order to promote the Sustainable Development. The Portugal SB13 conference topics cover a wide range of up-to-date issues and the contributions received from the delegates reflect critical research and the best available practices in the Sustainable Building field. The issues presented include: - Nearly Zero Energy Buildings - Policies for Sustainable Construction - High Performance Sustainable Building Solutions - Design and Technologies for Energy Efficiency - Innovative Construction Systems - Building Sustainability Assessment Tools - Renovation and Retrofitting - Eco-Efficient Materials and Technologies - Urban Regeneration - Design for Life Cycle and Reuse - LCA of sustainable materials and technologies All the articles selected for presentation at the conference and published in these Proceedings, went through a refereed review process and were evaluated by, at least, two reviewers. The Organizers want to thank all the authors who have contributed with papers for publication in the proceedings and to all reviewers, whose efforts and hard work secured the high quality of all contributions to this conference. A special gratitude is also addressed to Eng. José Amarílio Barbosa and to Eng. Catarina Araújo that coordinated the Secretariat of the Conference. Finally, Portugal SB13 wants to address a special thank to CIB, UNEP, FIDIC and iiSBE for their support and wish great success for all the other SB13 events that are taking place all over the world

Building energy renovation and smart integration of renewables in a social housing block toward nearly-zero energy status

Like other islands, Malta experiences great challenges to secure its energy supply and independence. Deep renovation of buildings to nearly zero energy and addressing “smart-readiness” are widely believed to contribute to solving such challenges, while meeting the exigencies of the 2018 European Union energy performance of buildings directive (EPBD). Nearly zero energy buildings benchmarks for residential buildings in Malta have been defined using established EPBD cost-optimal methodologies, however these guidelines detailing a one-step and one benchmark definition approach neglects peak loads, building-grid interaction requirements and energy storage. To counteract these inadequacies, this research proposes an innovative multi-criteria approach adapted from ISO 52000-1:2017 standard, which supports the new EPBD requirements for optimizing comfort and addressing energy poverty. This is carried out by first optimizing adaptive comfort in “free-running mode,” before switching to mechanical space heating and cooling. When implementing this approach on a case study of an existing 40-family social housing block undergoing deep renovation, it was found that the discomfort hours have been reduced drastically, while the peak demand for the remaining discomfort hours requiring mechanical heating and cooling has been halved. Despite such positive impact of passive measures, the research has quantitatively demonstrated that given Malta’s temperate climate, such measures have lower impact on the energy rating of the building, when compared to that achieved with active and renewable energy (RE) measures. Thus, the proposed multi-tier benchmarking approach ensures that each energy efficiency measure is appropriately weighted on its own merits, rather than lumping all measures under a single benchmark indicator. With regards to smartness indicators for load matching and grid interaction, a detailed analysis using system advisor model software demonstrated that battery energy storage systems have the capacity to match the RE supply to the demand, although this approach is still far away from being cost-optimal. The research concluded that RE incentives should therefore move away from feed-in tariffs and subsidize direct energy use, storage, and load matching given their high costs. Furthermore, the cost-optimal analysis should also quantify the costs of thermal discomfort, energy poverty and grid mismatch, to ensure a holistic approach to deep renovation of buildings.peer-reviewe

Nearly Zero Energy Building (NZEB)

Reducing the impact of climate change is one of the main challenges of today’s society. As such, it is necessary to reduce the high energy consumption that comes with constructing and using buildings. Current energy policies are promoting decarbonization of the built environment using the nearly zero-energy building’s concept. This book presents information on nearly zero-energy buildings, including materials, design, and new approaches

Powerskin Conference: Proceedings

The “third skin†of human beings – the building envelope – has a long history of development with a major impact on architecture. As an interface between inside and outside, facades not only determine aspects such as performance and energy efficiency, they also determine the aesthetics of buildings and cities; to the extend that they can create cultural identity. The invention of the curtain wall made facades independent from the building structure, but it remained an important – yet passive – element.  Powerskin Conference: Proceedings, January 19th 2017– Munich &nbsp

Full Proceedings, 2018

Full conference proceedings for the 2018 International Building Physics Association Conference hosted at Syracuse University